《皆大欢喜》通常与《无事生非》及《第十二夜》并列为莎翁的三大欢庆喜剧(festive comedy)。本剧有若干常见的莎剧主题，例如：由宫廷城都进入原始森林、善恶对比的两兄弟、女扮男装等等。

本剧的独特点之一是亚登森林，它有些类似侠盗罗宾汉的雪梧森林、圣经里的伊甸园，或是文学传统的田野雅卡迪(Acardia)，象征着理想世界的憧憬及向往。女主角罗莎琳是莎剧中最生动迷人的角色之一，而她女扮男装后和奥兰多所发展的情谊，则引发了同性恋议题。

本剧在莎士比亚逝世后一直到1740年才开始有演出记录，之后逐渐成为莎剧的常备剧目。到了20世纪，本剧因为同时呈现纯真与嘲讽、浪漫与写实，而同时吸引了喜好知识与梦想的观众。

List of illustrations

General editors’ preface

Preface

Introduction

 A brief view of the play

 Fictions of gender

Rosalind and the boy actor

Later Rosalinds

Celia

Orlando

Phoebe and Audrey

 Date

 The Forest of Arden

‘Well, this is the Forest of Arden’

The hunt

Robin Hood and his merry men

Staging the Forest of Arden

 Early foresters

The Earl of Essex

Thomas Morley

 Realms of gold

Shakespeare and Thomas Lodge

Shakespeare and Sidney

Harington, Ariosto and Rabelais

Golden worlds

 Pastoral

Genre: entertainments for Elizabeth

Corin and Touchstone

Borderlands: love and politics

A wise man and a fool: Jaques and Touchstone

 ‘A speaking picture’: readers and painters

 Text

The staying order

The Folio text: provenance and editorial practices

Text and performance

 Epilogue: ‘All the world’s a stage’

AS YOU LIKE IT

 Appendix 1: A court epilogue, Shrovetide 1599

 Appendix 2: Casting and doubling

 Appendix 3: Ben Jonson, As You Like It and the ‘War of the Theatres’

 Appendix 4: The Douai manuscript

 Appendix 5: Political after-lives: Veracini’s opera Rosalinda(1744)and Charles Johnson’s Love in a Forest(1723)

 Abbreviations and references

Abbreviations used in notes

Works by and partly by Shakespeare

Editions of Shakespeare collated

Other works cited

 Manuscripts

 Other works

Stage and film productions cited

 Eighteenth-century productions

 Nineteenth-century productions

 Twentieth-century productions

 Twenty-first-century productions

Index